DON'T READ THIS: Todd Robins couldn’t remember the last time he had checked the mail. Surely his mailbox would be overflowing with letters and bills and brochures for colleges. When he got to the end of his driveway, he saw that it wasn’t full at all! In fact, it seemed as though the mailbox were empty. He decided to peek inside anyway.

When he looked inside, he saw only one thing. A small slip of paper. Todd reached in and took out the mysterious slip. It was folded so that he could see only his name, Todd Robins, at the top. He walked inside and opened up the slip. It informed him that he had won a one day and one night stay in an exclusive mountain cabin up in the Rocky Mountains.

‘That’s strange. I don’t remember entering any sweepstakes or anything.’ Todd thought puzzledly.

He decided to just go along with it. A little vacation couldn’t hurt, right? He was close, too, so getting there wouldn’t be a problem. The slip had the address on the bottom along with a time to get to the cabin. He had to be there in 24 hours in order to get his prize, or the second runner up would get it.

When Todd woke up the next day, he started it normally, making his bowl of cereal, doing his morning jog, going to work at a local restaurant. It wasn’t until an hour before his deadline that he realized he had to get to the cabin. He looked at the clock. His shift ended in 10 minutes. That left 50 minutes for him to “claim his prize”. Could he do it? Probably not, but he couldn’t just run out of the restaurant, that was basically quitting. But then he had an idea.

“Hey, Al?” Al was a co worker of Todd’s, and he was on his 10 minute break.

“What’s up, Todd?” Al asked.

“Oh nothing, I was just wondering, you know...” Todd trailed off.

“What? Spit it out, geez.” Al was eager to get back to his break.

“I was just wondering if you could finish my shift for me?” Todd asked hopefully.

“No way, dude! This is my break!” Al looked shocked that Todd would even ask that.

“C’mon, man! 50 bucks?” Todd asked.

“100 and I might be feeling nice enough...” Al trailed off and began to look around at nothing in particular.

“Fine.” This trip had better be worth it. $100 was a lot for him.

Todd whipped out his wallet and gave Al what he had. Al walked out and began to serve the waiting customers.

‘Thank god’ Todd thought, relieved. He thought that conversation would never end.

Todd ran to his car and started it up. He drove past shops and people, making his way to the mountains. He got on the freeway and drove until he found the mountain exit. His old sedan wound through the twisty mountain road. About twenty minutes in, Todd’s car stopped.

‘What the...’ he thought.

He checked the gas. He still had about half a tank. What could be wrong? He checked under the hood. Transmission seemed fine, same with all the pipes and motors. His car was in near perfect shape.

Oh well. He would just call for help. He tried to turn on his phone. It turned on, but it might as well not have. The brightness was all whacked. He almost couldn’t see the background, a small cat with the body of a pop tart. Great. He would have to walk. The road seemed too steep to walk down. Luckily, there was an opening into the woods through an unusually tall hedge. He gathered his courage and walked into the dark woods.

For awhile, his only companion was the crunching of leaves under his feet. But suddenly, he heard footsteps, following closely behind him. He glanced over his shoulder. It was a man, dressed all in black, with a hat shadowing his face so that Todd couldn’t see any of him above the collarbone. The shadowy man had his hands in his pockets, as though he were concealing a weapon. Todd whipped around. The man was gone. Now he was seeing things. He rolled his eyes and kept walking.

A few minutes later, he heard a scream, quite close to him. He ran over to it. What he found left him speechless.

In front of him was a woman in a policewoman’s uniform. She was fine, except for the fact that she had a large kitchen knife in the center of her chest.